A Private Business

by Barbara Nadel

  Vi laughed. “One bloody crook fleecing another!”

  “Ah, but Grint’s had a religious conversion, guv,” Tony said.

  “Yeah, and I’m Cheryl Cole.” Vi shook her head. “I know it was a long time ago but Grint went down for fraud,” she said.

  “He makes no secret of it.”

  “No. And being originally from the West End, we haven’t followed his career,” Vi said. “But I have a bad feeling in my water about him and not just because of what Mumtaz Hakim reckoned he was doing. Bloody holy men! Most of them turn out to have feet of clay. I don’t like Iekanjika for the same reason. Maybe it’s because the Zimbabwean High Commission suddenly like him now he’s apparently off the hook for any sort of involvement in Jacob Sitole’s death. Or perhaps it’s because their attitude toward poor old Reverend Manyika seems to be in such marked contrast. But then maybe I just can’t bring meself to believe a word any representative of Robert Mugabe says. Him starving his own people is a story that seems to have slipped off the news radar. But then he doesn’t have any oil, does he?”

  Vi had had a bad time wrestling with her conscience during the build-up to the second Iraq war. She hadn’t approved and when she’d been sent to help police the anti-war march in London in February 2003, her heart had wanted to take off her uniform and join in. But she hadn’t. She’d done her duty in spite of the fact that she believed then, as now, that the only reason for the invasion of Iraq had been because the West wanted its oil. Tony Bracci she knew disagreed, and so she changed the subject. “But in the meantime, we still have that fucking flasher threatening the Olympics,” she said.

  They both laughed. The inflated importance of the 2012 Olympics was something they did agree on. That said, Vi didn’t really take the Olympic Flasher lightly. He could, she knew, escalate his behavior to assault at any time. Plus Chief Inspector Venus was distinctly unamused by their lack of progress and Vi had wanted to tell him that given the fact that the Met as a whole was facing job cuts, and possible pension cuts too, motivation and morale across the entire force wasn’t exactly high. Going the extra mile for a flasher was not at the top of anyone’s agenda, in Forest Gate or outside Forest Gate.

  “Could be to do with being anxious about her exam results,” Lee said.

  It was a slow day and he and Mumtaz were in the office together for all of it.

  “I wish my daughter cared at all,” he continued. They were talking about Shazia and Lee’s daughter Jodie and their very different attitudes toward their upcoming GCSE results. Shazia, according to Mumtaz, was not a happy girl and had lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose.

  “I can’t get her to eat,” Mumtaz said. “Even when my mother comes over laden with sweets, she doesn’t eat them. Shazia has always loved chocolate. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Lee shrugged. “My Jodie wants to go on X Factor. Doesn’t see qualifications as anything she needs. Just the right handbag, the right tan, the right shoes …” He shook his head. “Kids!”

  It had been nearly three months since Maria Peters had fired the Arnold Agency for a second time. She’d made a vitriolic accusation about Mumtaz prying into her private life and making “groundless” accusations against Paul Grint and then, after paying up by post, she’d just disappeared. Lee had tried to talk to her about what had happened, but she never returned his calls. Of course he couldn’t tell her that Mumtaz had been in the church that evening partly because he owed a favor to his old colleagues up at Forest Gate. But he had wanted to tell her that no offense had ever been intended. Now it was July and half the country was on holiday, in spite of the recession, and so the agency was quiet. Yet again, Lee was worrying about how he was going to pay his bills. The departure of Maria Peters still rankled, not just because she was a complete mystery—who was possibly being manipulated—but because she had brought good money too.

  “I don’t know why Shazia might be worried about her exams,” Mumtaz said. “She worked very hard for them. Her predicted grades are all As or A stars.”

  “She’s a bright girl. You’re lucky.”

  “Am I?” She didn’t feel lucky. The bank had called her three times already that morning about the mortgage. But why bother Lee with that? There was nothing he could do about it. Mumtaz walked over to the tiny kitchen in the corner of the office and put the kettle on. “Tea?”

  “Brill.” Lee leaned back in his chair and rested his head against the wall behind him. “Shazia thinks,” Lee said. “Kid’s got some sort of inner life going on. All my daughter ever goes on about is stuff. Clothes, make-up, iPhones, jewelry. She’s on my case all the time.” He didn’t say anything about his ex-wife who chose not to work. That was private business. “And yet some parents are shelling out for things for their kids all the time. Little sods won’t leave them alone.”

  The kettle began to boil. “Your daughter will grow out of it,” Mumtaz said.

  “You think?” Lee was far from convinced. “When it comes to kids nowadays I don’t know what to think.”

  Vi Collins’s case with the two Zimbabwean lads had finally resolved. Matthias Chibanda had admitted that he’d killed Jacob Sitole for his new mobile. How pathetic! And how very, very sad for a death to occur over something so trivial. But it was also good that it hadn’t signaled some sort of feud between the two respective churches—even if Vi still distrusted Pastor Iekanjika.

  “Even religious kids get involved in crime now.” Lee was aware that he was making himself sound like some sort of grumpy old git but he didn’t care.

  “You mean like the Zimbabwean boys?” Mumtaz poured boiling water onto teabags in two cups and then stirred them around with a spoon. “People still want things even if they are religious.”

  “Like Pastor Grint?”

  Grint’s fraudulent past had involved a property scam in his native Shepherd’s Bush. Twenty years ago he’d sold houses he didn’t own to immigrants.

  “Part of his appeal is that he’s come through all that and found God,” Mumtaz said. “Supposedly.”

  “And yet you think that he’s hypnotizing those people in his services.”

  Mumtaz poured milk into the cups and then hooked out the teabags. She spooned two sugars into Lee’s cup and put it on his desk. “I definitely saw a well-known technique at work when he took Maria’s hand and then tapped her head. He was confounding her senses so that she would shut down. He told her to sleep, I think. He was trying to put her in a trance.” She took her tea back to her desk and sat down. “All religious ceremony and ritual has an element of hypnosis within it. There is repetition, there is meaningful imagery, there is enhanced emotion. All these things can lead to states of heightened consciousness. So she was halfway there already.”

  “And you’re religious yourself? Knowing all that?”

  She smiled. “Just because ritual worship encourages a heightened state of awareness doesn’t alter the central tenets of a religion; it doesn’t mean that God does not exist.”

  “But if we’re basically animals just responding to—”

  “So what if we are? Just because we are animals that doesn’t disprove God. God made us whatever we are.”

  Lee was really happier listening to old punk records and cleaning up than he was with philosophy. Although he was intrigued as to where Mumtaz stood on the theory of evolution. He’d never met a religious Muslim yet who believed in it. He did play about with the notion of asking Mumtaz what she thought about dinosaurs, but then thought better of it. Christian fundamentalists claimed to believe that God had put dinosaur bones in the earth to test man’s faith. Lee thought it was bollocks and it made him cross and so he held his peace.

  Lee thought about his brother Roy and wondered where he was. It was nearly three months now since he’d chucked him out of their mother’s house. She’d been out. Lee had found Roy pissed as a fart, shitting on the kitchen floor. He’d beaten what crap had remained inside his brother out of him and then thrown him into the street. Amazingly he
’d gone and stayed gone. Maybe, Lee thought without any emotion whatsoever, he’s dead.

  If she looked for long enough at the cats in the fireplace, she could make them disappear. Had Mumtaz still been in her life, she would no doubt have been able to explain that scientifically. But Mumtaz was not in her life because Mumtaz had betrayed her. She’d watched what went on in church and no doubt mocked and she’d managed to prevent her from testifying and accepting Deliverance. That moment of clarity and grace she’d felt on that evening, now almost three months ago, had disappeared never to return. Maria despaired that it ever would. She put a pill on her tongue while Betty was out of the room and swallowed it.

  Betty knew that she had to take medication; sometimes she went and got it from the chemist for her. Sometimes she even gave her some of her own pills when she was in danger of running out.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  Maria jumped. She hadn’t heard Betty come in from the kitchen. “No. Thanks.”

  There was a look on her friend’s face that could have been pity but then she smiled, said, “OK,” and went back into the kitchen. If Betty did pity her, then Maria could understand it. She was still outside God’s grace, how could she not be pitied? And Betty didn’t even know why.

  Betty came back into the living room and Maria listened to her talk about “designated charities.” Every month, the church nominated a designated charity to give a proportion of its donations to. This month it was some organization to do with rehabilitating child soldiers in Africa, but Maria didn’t really listen. Distracted by her own problems, she cut into Betty’s explanation and said, “I’m going to ring Mr. Allitt. Could you get me the phone please, Bet?”

  Betty looked at her questioningly, as well she might. The phone was on the coffee table, only a short stretch of the arm away. But everything ached and she felt sick and tired and she just didn’t want to make any effort. Betty handed her the phone and then left the room. Maria dialed Mr. Allitt’s number and instantly began to feel relieved.

  * * *

  It was Adele and Hilary! Shazia slumped down underneath her bedroom window and wondered what to do. The old man next door was in and so he’d know they were there. He’d guess she was in, even if he didn’t know.

  She heard Hilary call, “Zia, hon, where are you?”

  They would have brought fags and enough of Hil’s mum’s fridge cake to sink a ship. Shazia bit her bottom lip. Now it was the school holidays they were always round. The landline rang and she knew that she was going to have to leave it. But she didn’t want to ignore them! When they did finally catch up with her they’d want to know where she’d been and what she’d been doing. The phone continued to ring until the machine cut in. She heard Mumtaz’s voice ask callers to leave a message and then a long beep.

  Outside Adele yelled, “Oh, come on, Zi, shift your ass!”

  Shazia heard someone on the other end of the phone take a deep breath and instantly she knew it was him. “Oh, Mrs. Hakim, this is most respectfully Mr. Aziz Choudhury.” He took another vaguely asthmatic breath. Shazia pulled a face. He sounded like some sort of comedy Paki, this man her stepmother’s parents wanted so much for Amma to like! “I would be very grateful if you could call me at your earliest convenience. Thank you.”

  As well as talking like a comedy Paki, Aziz Choudhury was completely hideous and old and wore horrible, stinking shalwar kameez. Ugh. Shazia didn’t want a man in the house with them, not ever again.

  “Zi!”

  They weren’t going away. Shazia looked out of the side window at the house next door and then, keeping low so that she couldn’t be seen, she ran to Amma’s bedroom at the back. Being careful to remain down and out of sight, she looked out into the back garden just in time to see the old man slip through the hole in the hedge and hide himself amongst the plum trees. What was she going to do? She felt her eyes tear up but quickly wiped them away with her sleeve. She’d already hidden from her friends once that week. If she denied them again they’d really make her life crap. As for the old man, well who knew what he’d do?

  XXIV

  He walked along beside her, making them look like a couple, smiling his lime-white smile. Through a mixture of guilty desire and absolute disgust Mumtaz made herself look up at him. Then she said, “I don’t know what you want with me. I don’t know why you killed Ahmed, but you must realize by now that I’m not going to give you to the police.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s my business,” she said. “Go away.”

  It was the first time he had ever spoken to her and his voice was very deep and very posh British-sounding for an Asian boy of his age.

  They were just turning out of Windsor Road and into Claremont and she was beginning to suspect that he might be walking her home. She didn’t understand why and she didn’t want it. “My stepdaughter will be in,” she said. “I don’t want her seeing you. Whatever the … You killed her father. Please go.”

  For just a second his eyes flickered in a way that could have signaled some sort of conscience. But then he smiled again and she knew that really he was a reptile—a coldblooded silver lizard.

  “I will not expose you and I am grateful, but you also disgust me,” she said. She began to walk faster, but he lengthened his stride just a little and very quickly caught up with her.

  She hadn’t seen him for almost two months. His appearance, seemingly waiting for her outside the police station, had come as a shock. She’d just walked past, avoiding eye contact as she did so, but he’d followed her. She didn’t know why any more than she knew why he’d lurked outside her house in the past. Surely he had to be afraid she’d call the police even if she said that she wouldn’t? Now she was almost home and she wondered what he would do. Head down, she powered forward. Intent upon just getting away from him and into her own house, she didn’t notice the thin, elderly man walk out in front of her.

  “Oh, I’m so—”

  Flustered, she looked up at him. “I’m sorry, I …” He was old, thin and white and she recognized him.

  “No, no, no,” he said. “It’s my fault, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  He smiled. He was the solicitor who worked near to her office on Green Street—the one she’d seen at Maria Peters’ church. Mumtaz looked up and, suddenly aware of her surroundings, saw that he’d just come out of Maria’s house.

  “Are you all right?” She’d made him stumble slightly.

  “Oh, it’s nothing, my dear,” he said. “Nothing at all. Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes, I …”

  “Well, that’s jolly good then.” He smiled again and then walked, large briefcase in his hand, to a Bentley that was parked across the road.

  Once the solicitor had gone, Mumtaz looked around for him. But he’d gone. Feeling grateful for that, if nothing else, she put her hand on her chest and then stood still for a moment while she caught her breath. Then just for the smallest of seconds she looked at Maria Peters’ house and saw a thin, white face that could have been the comedian looking back at her.

  His dad had called it ligging—turning up in a pub with no money and expecting to be bought drinks. But he was skint. Bob the Builder still owed him a ton, but no one seemed to know where he was. Depressed, Lee tried to kid himself that because he didn’t drink booze his ligging wasn’t “real.” But it was and when the old men, his dad’s old mates, who usually haunted the outer reaches of the Boleyn had gone, Lee was left alone with a pint of ligged diet Coke, the bar staff and a load of strangers. He looked around, half hoping and half dreading seeing Roy. But his brother was nowhere—unlike what looked like a random selection of Newham’s indigenous white tribes who sat and drank and flirted, laughed and sometimes shouted. Contained in the pub they were, Lee thought, a bit like a band of well fed refugees. Many of them, and that included his mother and his brother, saw themselves very much as an endangered minority. For some reason the coming of the Hindus and the Sikhs back in the sixties h
ad gone on almost without comment. But first the Pakis and then the eastern Europeans had struck some sort of nerve with the locals that Lee didn’t entirely understand. In a sense he could see that some of the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis kept themselves to themselves but then so had some of the Sikhs and the Hindus. As for the eastern Europeans, many of the Jews who still lived in the borough had come originally from places like Poland and they were just part of the community.

  That said, and as old Reverend Murkoff the rabbi once told Lee, “Trouble is, son, a lot of these Poles and Lithuanians have anti-Semitism stamped through them like Southend rock. Some of their ancestors worked in the camps during the war.”

  That something that had happened such a long time ago was still having an effect upon the present was both understandable and horrendous at the same time. It made Lee feel bleak and he knew that had he actually had any money he may well have bought a pint.

  “On your own?”

  He didn’t recognize the girl at all. He saw a curtain of straightened blond hair, a face and shoulders unusually brown for an English summer and he smelt a very strong waft of perfume. “Hello.”

  Lee Arnold didn’t need some young Essex girl to come on to him to confirm that he was attractive to women. But he looked at her with a slightly crooked half smile and asked her her name.

  Her laugh was pleasantly deep and throaty even if her make-up was thickly appalling. She said, “I’m Foxy.”

  “Are you now.” If she came from Romford or Basildon or Southend-on-Sea that was probably her real name. “And what can I do for you, Foxy?”

  “A WKD and Coke?”

  He laughed. Somewhere at the bottom of his left-hand jacket pocket there was a twenty pence piece. “And if I can’t buy you a drink?” he asked. “What then?”

  He knew how avaricious girls of her age were. He was prepared for the abuse, the imagined slight she would make to his manhood. But strangely Foxy just kept on smiling.

  Back at the flat Chronus went into a frenzy of excitement when Lee walked in with a visitor.